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All our qualities, whether good or bad, are unstable and ambiguous, and almost all are at the mery of chance.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Age: 66 †
Born: 1613
Born: September 15
Died: 1680
Died: March 17
Memoirist
Military Personnel
Writer
Paris
France
François VI
Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Prince de Marcillac
François
Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Risk
Almost
Quality
Chance
Whether
Good
Ambiguous
Unstable
Qualities

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It is most difficult to speak when we are ashamed of being silent.
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Those who are condemned to death affect sometimes a constancy and contempt for death which is only the fear of facing it so that one may say that this constancy and contempt are to their mind what the bandage is to their eyes.
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There are very few things impossible in themselves and we do not want means to conquer difficulties so much as application and resolution in the use of means.
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We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.
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We are better pleased to see those on whom we confer benefits than those from whom we receive them.
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For envy, like lightning, generally strikes at the top Or any point which sticks out from the ordinary level. LUCRETIUS, De Rerum Natura Our envy always outlives the felicity of its object.
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Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others.
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Sobriety is love of health, or inability to eat much.
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If we took as much pains to be what we ought, as we do to deceive others by disguising what we are we might appear as we are, without being at the trouble of any disguise.
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Weak people cannot be sincere.
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It is as common for tastes to change as it is uncommon for traits of character.
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It is a species of coquetry to make a parade of never practising it.
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The accent of a man's native country remains in his mind and his heart, as it does in his speech.
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We can be more clever than one, but not more clever than all.
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What renders other people's vanity insufferable is that it wounds our own.
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The cunningest dissimulation is when a man pretends to be caught in the traps others set for him and a man is never so easily over-reached as when he is contriving to over-reach others.
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